An hour before, the scene was nearly as striking, as my group of six hiked past giant piles of slag, dotted with bright-yellow wildflowers at their base.

Our guide, Elaine Price, an environmental biologist by training, has been long drawn to these contradictory landscapes – “where nature and industry collide,” as she puts it. So drawn, in fact, that she and her husband created a tour company, NatureVation Outdoor Adventures, which showcases the unusual sights and stories of Northeast Ohio.

Among their tours: a five-hour exploration of the Black River Valley in Lorain County, a former steel-making hub that is slowly, gradually being reclaimed by Mother Nature.

Story by Susan Glaser, Plain Dealer Travel editor

Photos by Matt Shiffler, Special to The Plain Dealer

Hiking the Steel Mill Trail, part of the Lorain Metro Parks' Black River Reservation. (Matt Shiffler, Special to The Plain Dealer)

We spent about an hour walking along the Steel Mill Trail, part of Lorain County Metro Parks’ Black River Reservation, past giant waste piles and run-off ponds from days past; and then hopped atop rented kayaks for a relaxing two-hour float past the massive, now-quiet steel-making facilities. (Mostly quiet, anyway; Republic Steel earlier this year announced plans to restart its Lorain rolling mill in response to President Trump’s steel tariffs.)

Elaine Price, president and CEO of NatureVation Outdoor Adventures, leads a group through Lorain's Black River Reservation. (Matt Shiffler, Special to The Plain Dealer)

The tour ended with a lovely spread of upscale picnic foods, where we compared notes about what we saw.

“It’s incredible – a former industrial wasteland, now filled with bald eagles,” said Chris Blanchard, a Michigan native and a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University.

An idea born in New Mexico

Wildflowers bloom at the base of a giant slag pile along the Black River in Lorain. (Matt Shiffler, Special to The Plain Dealer)

An idea born in New Mexico

Price, a native of Chicago, first came to Cleveland 34 years ago, as an intern for Sohio.

Over the decades, she’s worked for GE Lighting, American Steel & Wire, and was CEO of Holden Arboretum for seven years. Currently, she’s the strategic greenspace planner for the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission.

That’s her day job. Her weekends are spent with husband and business partner Gordon Landefeld, working to develop NatureVation – it’s a mash-up of nature and innovation --